The present invention relates to a character recognition method and system for recognizing a (typical or stereotyped) character(s), numeral(s), symbol(s) or the like indicated in a printed, stamped, carved or other form on the surface of industrial products, for example, electronic parts such as IC's. The invention relates more particularly to such a character recognition method and system in which a character and/or a row of characters can be satisfactorily recognized even when a character is broken into plural parts or swelled to be contiguous to an adjacent character and/or the row of characters is inclined. Throughout the specification and the appended claims, the term "character", is used as a general term for not only a so-called character or letter such as a letter of the alphabet (alphabetic characters), but also indicates a numeral (numeric character), a symbol (symbolic character) and so on.
In the prior art, a character is recognized depending upon a shape peculiar to that character, as disclosed by, for example, JP-A-55-157078. Also, a hand-written character is usually recognized on the basis of the strokes extracted therefrom.
However, in the hitherto known character recognition method, no special attention is paid to the case where characters having different fonts (styles and/or sizes) coexist, the case where a character involves some deflects in marking such as the breakage into plural parts or the contiguous swelling to an adjacent character, and/or the case where a row of characters is inclined. In the case where the characters of different fonts exist, dictionary data corresponding to a variety of fonts and hence a large-capacity memory for storage of such dictionary data is required, which means that a lot of time is taken for collation with the dictionary data. On the other hand, in the case where the character is broken or swelled or the row of characters is inclined, there may be a fear that the impossibility of recognition or an erroneous recognition is encountered.